GMI Ratings

GMI Ratings is an independent provider of research and ratings on environmental, social, governance and accounting-related risks affecting the performance of public companies. GMI Ratings is a registered investment adviser and is therefore subject to certain reporting requirements. Specifically, per our ethics policy, our analysts are precluded from engaging in any transactions involving any companies we cover. Our research is completely independent. For the record, we have had no contact with Gray Wolf Research or Mr. House.

Hi, I'm the author. Thanks for the interesting information about Russia's privatization drive and Rosneft's offshore exploration partnership with Exxon.

As for your other comment, we use a proprietary model to calculate the AGR score, and to do this we need to be able to compare specific data that are reported in enough of the same way that the comparisons make sense. Unless you work for us, you have no way of knowing what data is required to calculate an AGR. Most publicly traded companies provide enough data to calculate one of these scores, but Rosneft isn't one of them.

Hi, in my story I quote Oracle's CFO Catz, who said in the conference call linked to in the article that "So we will now disclose a combined new software license and cloud software subscription revenue number, though we will break out the cloud revenue number for you. Expenses will not be broken out, because the same sales organization and the same development organization are the bulk of the expenses in both our on-premise software and cloud offering." On page 19 of the 10Q I don't see expenses broken out for the total software business, and the revenues are lumped together on page 34.

We compare Oracle to global software companies.

The $14.9 million number is Ellison's compensation in 2011 minus his stock-linked compensation that year.

Hi, you can find further information about us at gmiratings.com. I definitely have no intention to spew biased disinformation! Is there anything specific in my article that you think is false? If so, please let me know so I can double-check my work once again and address this.

Bill, you ask the perfect question. If the Fed's supervisory powers already allow them to regulate banking compensation why weren't they doing it before? It's not as if groups like mine weren't warning about the governance risk engendered by the kinds of compensation practices for executives, at least, that were all too common at the banks that failed. We've had huge red flags flying over AIG, Washington Mutual, and Citigroup since 2001, for example

From what I can tell, M. Sarkozy didn't say that bonuses would be forfeited if a trader's department lost money, though you would certainly get that impression from the English translation of his comments. But when he was speaking in French, he only ever referred to the singular. In other words, if in the two years following the award the trader loses money, then the bonus will be clawed back or forfeited. Here is what M. Sarkozy said in French: “attendre trois ans pour toucher l'intégralité du bonus et si dans les deux années qui suivent son activité perd de l'argent, il ne touchera pas son bonus. Pas de bonus sans malus, ce n'est pas à tous les coups on gagne. “ Which roughly translates as: “wait three years to get the whole of the bonus and if in the two years following his activity loses money, he won’t get his bonus. No bonus with malus, it’s not heads I win, tails I win.” Not their activity, but his activity. With this in mind it seems more reasonable, at least to me, though I can't be said to be a fan of government interference in this process. But no one else seems keen on making the jump except the Swiss banks.Paul Hodgson